dustinfluke.com

So I found this Wordpress app for my iPod touch that allows me to manage my blog from my iPod. Now, this has already been useful to approve comments (thanks Rich), but I’m realizing that it probably isn’t all that great for blog posting. I’m five minutes or so into this entry and don’t have much content. Either way, it’s super handy for edits and comment moderation. Thanks wordpress!

Sent from my iPod.

I did it.

I finally decided to ditch the django blog for now and really get something going on the easier WordPress. There’s a few reasons for this:

1. I don’t have a job right now, and I feel that I need to re-establish some form of communication with a lot of people, but primarily former co-workers, whom I miss talking with. This blog (and rss feeds) is a way to keep tabs on each other without hanging out in an IRC channel all day not using my time to the full capacity.
2. I want to use my time more wisely, and when I write, I tend to remember more. I’ll likely blog about things going on at a given point in time if nothing more than to remember more clearly what it is I intend to do.
3. I have some upcoming projects I’ve previously announced, but never had the time to work on. I’ve established some unwritten goals for these things, and getting the blog up is the first step to the completion of those projects. (Then blog about those goals to get them written down) I want to be able to communicate progress, and I feel this is a good way to do that.
4. Twitter is only 140 characters, and so with that and Facebook, I hope to gain a following of sorts for reinforcement, ideas, networking, etc. A blog is a great platform for sharing lenghthier items.
5. It’s about time. I’ve let this site stagnate and go stale for the last 3 years or so, letting indecision get in my way of getting any real progress done. (WP or Django) Doing some self analysis in this “time between opportunities” has allowed me to see that I developed some pretty crippling habits. If you really want to know what they are, Laura can tell you. All of the self realization I’ve talked with her about she’s reinforced with a kind “Yep!” and smile. I’m glad she listens to me, even when she wants to get back to reading her vampire books she’s hooked on at the moment.
6. I already had a ton of contnet on wordpress and didn’t feel like converting it. Sure, I could start writing everything in reStructured text to be fully mobile across various platforms, but the fact is I know wordpress pretty well, and don’t feel now is the time to dive into python or django.
7. Lastly, whether it helps or not, maybe someday someone will go through a time in their life where they question thier purpose in life, the direction they want to go, where they feel they should be, etc. as I feel I am right now. If I blog a bit about it, perhaps that will inspire that person to look deeper at things. It’s a journey, and one I’m not sure of the destination of. I just know I have a unique purpose, for God intended it, and I plan to discover what that is. It might happen in two minutes, two hours, two days, or two decades. I have no idea, but it’s an area of focus for me now. I hope that by sharing, I can help someone else. It’s really that simple.

What you’ll notice is I’m using a stock theme. I have some other ideas on paper that I’ll implement over time, but I feel that since I have the content from archive, I only wrote 6 entries last year on the django blog, and I’d rather focus on writing content and doing some planning for other things and finding a job, I’ll worry about look and feel at a later point in time. I realized it just wansn’t all super important to me right now.

I’ll also be adding other features like my flickr stream, tweets, project pages, and other things as time allows. I just know if I try to do everything at once, I’ll fail.

Time to do some site changing and get this back on the proper dustinfluke.com domain.

It seems that for the past couple of years I’ve always wanted to have a web site that is good, but I’ve never gotten around to it. I really desire a django powered site, but how much do I really need that in favor of something that just works? My wife has a nice looking blog that she actually pushes new content to, unlike my own “is never finished” website that has been stagnating for the last 2 years or so.

That said, I’m looking at the new year hoping for some changes in these areas. I might be using wordpress again, but it’s better than using nothing.

On a side note, I also have an upcoming coffee project I’ll be working on launching. Hopefully this will be the start to a long road of success in a coffee selling and roasting business, but we’ll see where it takes me. I need some dollars to start up, so while we’re waiting on that to be collected, I’ll be working on some video projects I have an idea for. I might even start up the website again, or just publish it as-is so there is more motivation to get this off the ground.

I’m busy. Every day I see things I’d love to blog about, comment on, etc. but they usually end up buried as a vague comment in twitter or perhaps a small flickr photo. I’m not sure what’s holding me back from finishing this blog up. I think part of it comes from a rearrangement of interests, from using a django powered blog to coffee roasting. I thought about moving back to wordpress, as it still exists, and copying and pasting my django blog entries wouldn’t be a big deal. So I’m thinking about it. Sure, wordpress is a pretty easy “plug-n-play” blog app with enough features. However, even utilizing Basic Apps blog app is so much more flexible long term, and I could integrate new apps that I have ideas for pretty easily. Perhaps the direction is to have a working blog on wordpress until I actually have django app related items to integrate into it, and build out the blog after I’ve had additional time to work with django. The template language is the easy part, thanks to Ellington and my job. I guess it’s the finding time part I struggle with the most. Time for some goal setting…

EDIT: This post was from when my blog was on a checkout of django trunk pre-django1.0 days

So I just saw Jeff Croft’s link up to the latest django comments refactoring.
I was a little bummed at the fact that

1. I’m eventually going to have to switch my comments application when I do an svn up
2. I’m probably not going to write my own comments application
3. I’m eventually going to have to switch my comments application when I do an svn up

Anyway, I guess its what I deserve for using the latest svn release of django to power my site and developing over 4 plus months.

So I’m starting my coffee application. I’ve got loads of notes in my new moleskine, and for the first time tonight, I think I’ve managed to wrap my head around a lot of it. Such as, “Oh, I don’t need to have separate tables of things that are going to have address1, address2, city, state, country, phone, etc. I just need basic places with place types tied to them.” That would allow me to have a place that is more than one type of place, e.g. a business that is a coffee roaster and a retail coffee house. Why did it take me so long to figure that out? So, as I continue to polish up this blog, which currently looks horrible, and learn more about writing up applications, I think I’m starting to “get it.” — Only now I feel like utilizing Nathan’s basic apps.

I guess we’ll see. I sure could use the nice shortcut, given I’ve got quite a few items to build in, and the profiles would also help immensely.

I’m currently listening to a podcast done by Paul Boag of boagworld.com
His typical podcast is funny, informative, and overall really good. This last installation however, Paul focused on web standards and doing a non-technical presentation. Riddled with religious conotations (such as the trinity of web standards), I feel that Paul does a very good job of expalining what standards are, what css is, among other things. He also focuses on the business benefits, which not many web standards advocates really get into all that much. Being a business owner himself, I feel that his points are well worth a listen.

To listen and look at the slides, or to just listen to the audio, head over to www.boagworld/standards.

And tell your boss if they don’t already know about standards, because with a few changes to a business model (if there is a web team) one can become proactive, and less reactive to designing for usability in all facets of your organization.

I may have just found the CSS book of my dreams. Before I explain, I’d like to point out that I’ve always been looking for web design and css related books. While I rarely read them from cover to cover, these books provide tips and tidbits that I can always look back on. Plus, having a lot of web design books makes me look like someone that knows what they’re doing.

This miracle book I speak of is one that has recently been released. It’s CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions by
Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Cameron Moll

From the book’s website:

"While CSS is a relatively simple technology to learn, it is a difficult one to master. When you first start developing sites using CSS, you will come across all kinds of infuriating browser bugs and inconsistencies. It sometimes feels like there are a million and one different techniques to master, spread across a bewildering array of websites. The range of possibilities seems endless and makes for a steep and daunting learning curve."

After reading this sentence I thought to myself, "Wow! This is exactly the way I feel about CSS" So I downloaded the sample chapter on layout and the explanation finally made float layouts clear to me. Perhaps it’s the combination of other sources and this description that finally allowed me to see what’s going on. Anyway, I really like this book so far. That said, I’m going to buy a copy in a few days. Perhpas I’ll actually read this one all the way through.